Top award for Royal Berks nurse

Gastrointestinal Nurse of the Year Dean Linzey with 'champion' Jules Fox

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A nurse at Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH) has won a national award in recognition of his work tackling hepatitis C in Reading.

Dean Linzey was named Gastrointestinal Nurse of the Year at the Gastrointestinal Nursing Awards on Thursday, March 29, at the Landmark Hotel in London.

He received the award for a project which tests drug and alcohol abusers for the blood-borne virus in their communities by taking a swab of saliva from their mouths instead of the traditional blood test.

The sample is put into a solution and lines, similar to those on a pregnancy test, will appear in a matter of minutes, indicating either a positive or negative result.

Mr Linzey, a specialist hepatitis nurse, has trained 20 drug workers to be ‘champions’ and carry out the tests. If the test is positive, they will refer the clients to RBH for treatment.

He said: “The problem is identifying a blood-borne virus in the substance abuse community, because obviously that community doesn’t engage in mainstream services very well and are particularly at risk of blood-borne virus.

“Rather than looking at it from a medical point of view we started thinking about how else the service might be put together.”

Mr Linzey spent time working in Africa where he saw similar projects.

Mr Linzey said his team are now seeing 200 people with hepatitis C, compared with 80 before the scheme was introduced.

One of the champions carrying out the tests is Jules Fox, from drug service Cranstoun. She said: “Fifty per cent of our users are hepatitis C positive, so we knew there was a need there and wanted to get them tested and into treatment as soon as possible.

“Just to get as many people that treatment where they wouldn't have had it before is a simply fantastic opportunity.”